195 replies to this topic

[BasOne]

As the old topic is rather.. old and long threaded i thought i'd start a new thread.

With al the new stuff in LDD 4.X (i imagine we'll get a few more updates before 5) i wonder what you would still like to see in a new version.

As for me.. aahh... well..

1. Mirror option, select a group of bricks, mirror horizontal or vertical.
2. better hide/unhide options, hide/unhide per group/color/brick.
3. extended group options.
4. show options, show as rendered, show as bounding box and the like.
5. Better memory, CPU useage, build a model that's 500.000 bricks with ease (a simple hide bricks not shown should help a lot (that's done in most 3d Software, don't render polygons that arn't visible))
6. extendend brick library, this could be achieved by making it partially open source, 1000's of brickers outhere that can make bricks in 3d software.
7. camera controls, i really would like camera controls, perspective, no perspective, 2/3rds view, rightside view, left, top, bottom, 45 degrees from front 20 degrees up....

What would you like to see in the next version (or the one after that   )

[Calabar]

Good idea this topic. The old topic has become too heavy and contains requests already implemented in LDD4.
Here are my requests: I'll add new requests in this post, editing it.


Selection
Selection need a great improvement.

• Allow to "sum"/"subtract" selections made with the rectangle
  
• Select inside another selection (subselection) or inside selected group/groups.
  
• Add "Category Selection" tool, that allow to select all the bricks belonging to the category of the clicked brick.
  
• Add "Group Selection" tool, that allow to select the smaller group whose the brick is part (and the chance to expand the selection to parent groups using + and - keys)
  
• Chance to combine selection tools: for example if I want to select all red slopes that form the roof of my house, I combine the "Colour Selection" tool with the "Group Selection" tool (and I work inside a subselection if necessary). We need a sort of checkbox to achieve that.
  
• A button to save temporarily one (or more) selection and then reuse it later!
  
• Special Groups Selection Tool (see "Special Groups for selection" request).
  
• Manage a separate history for selections (in the present version, the history don't care about selections).

Other Tools

• (Hide tool) Allow to unhide a subgroup of bricks: now it is possible to unhide the whole scene only.
  This function can be easily implemented using groups (selecting and then unhiding a group), or, for a finest work, implement a function that allow to temporary see hidden bricks (as "ghost bricks", using transparency) and then select the brick you want to unhide.
  
• (Rotation Tool) Chance to rotate a selection or a group even if the block is not connected.
  
• (Rotation Tool) Chance to rotate a selection or a group without a physical pivot, but choosing a pivot on the fly.
  
• (Flex Tool) Add to the flex tool a function similar to Hinge align tool: You select a starting point and an end point, the the tool will flex the element so that it fit to the stated position.
  
• (Flex Tool) A mirror function for the flexible elements. Very useful to avoid double work with a couple of flexible elements.

Groups

• Chance to place the groups sidebar as an horizontal bar below the viewport. This is very useful if you want to work with groups and bricks palette simultaneously.
  
• Naming groups
  
• Resizeable group box and less space-wasting frames surrounding the groups boxes. [Done in LDD 4.2.5]
  
• Buttons to expand/collapse in one click all groups/subgroups until a certain level (for example, I could need to collapse all groups whose level is greater than the second).
  
• Chance to delete a group with all its subgroups with a single operation (now it is necessary to delete all subgroups before)
  
• A single button to delete ALL empty Groups.
  
• Button to create a parent-group from selected groups
  
• Drag'n drop of groups to easy move that inside the group tree.
  
• Take advantage of groups order to create building instructions.
  
• Special Groups for selection: chance to define a group as "special for selection", so that, using the "Special Group Selection Tools" will be possible to select these groups. It would be very useful to increase playability of the models: for example in a lego chess game every piece should be defined as special group, so it would be possible to move that with the specific selection tool. Another example could be define minifigs as special groups, so that it is easy to move minifigs inside the scene and "play" with that.
  Note that the difference between standard groups and special groups for selection is that the last ones are selectable directly in the scene using the "Special Group Selection Tools" without opening the "Groups" panel.
  
• [New] Allow several groupings instead of a single one. For a single set, I could for example need a group subdivision to logically separate elements (for example minifigs from builds from veichles, ...), one other to easily allow repaint of some elements of the model, one other to create build instructions, etc...

Colours

• Chance to copy in one click the selected colour of the mail palette in the bucket palette (and vice versa).
  
• Add a "recent used colour" palette section. It would be useful other dinamic palette like this, for example "more common colours in the scene", "used colours", ecc... but that requires a little extra effort, because it is necessary to study a new shape for the palette.
  
• Using the bucket tools is extremely uncomfortable at the moment: if you have a selection and you click on the "paint tool" button, the selected bricks are coloured with the colour already selected in the bucket palette and, doing it, you loose the selection. So, if I have a difficult selection and I decide to recolour it, it is impossible if the colour of the palette is not the one I want (mmm... actually I could create a group, change the colour and then reselect it, but it is a bit uncomfortable...).

Bricks Palette

• Allow to zoom a single element in the brick palette (to inspect it before using it).
  
• Provide composed parts as separate elements (for example the turntable 74340, or the hands of a minifig, etc...)
  
• Add old parts that has been removed, suck as 4737, present in LDD3.
  
• Check if a brick exsists in a specific colour (has been made as a real brick, I mean). A "real brick" filter in the palette would be useful too.
  
• A minifig Editor
  
• Improve the decoration tool. Often you need to apply the decoration to clearly see it, a preview box would be very useful. Besides the present decoration window has problems when the decorations are in great number (as for the minifig faces), we need something better.
  A solution could be to take advantage of the left sidebar adding a "Decoration" Tab (in addition to "Bricks", "Templates" and "Groups"). The sidebar should contain a preview pane on the top (to clearly see the applied decoration) and under it the various decorations available for the selected brick (showed as the brick tab shows the bricks).
  
• Group similar bricks (different revision of the same brick) in a single icon, and allow to choose different type than main one with a popup (like in DMB mode when you hide colours).
  
• Add designID in the palette, under the icon of the element (it could be almost transparent and highlighted with mouse over).
  
• Add a button in the palette, under the icon of the element, that open a popup with the available colours for that brick. For available colours I mean the colours the brick was produced in real with.

Pretentious Requests

• Check model stability (with a "shake" function and a "gravity" function, the second very useful to find the center of gravity).
  
• Animations

Software Issues

• Fix memory leaks (the one of the bricks palette fill my ram in few time).
  
• Fix the issue with rotation tool when you have more than one pivot.
  
• Fix the issue due to irregular object bounding boxes: sometimes these boxes interact with the scene, but they shouldn't because are not real (for example the windscreen of the set 6932 lift the spaceship from the ground when I rotate it to close the cabin).
  
• Allow bricks outlining in old video card too (I have an old radeon 9700m in the notebook, much more powerful than my pc's integrated graphics, but in the igp I can outline bricks, with the 9700 I can't).
  
• Fix the brick list on html built instructions. Often I obtain in the last step a long list of almost all bricks listed as bricks added in that step. The fix means 1) avoid that long list in the last step and 2) provide a correct bricklist at the end.
  
• Increase the number of levels supported by building instructions (the present 3 levels could be few, we need 5-6 levels at least).
  
• Don't clear history when you save the model.
  
• Allow to open more than one file. It is useful to work on a little element on a separate window/tab and than, when complete, add it to the main model. Or it is very useful when you have to modify an imported model before using it on the model you are working on.
  
• [New] Solve the slowness opening LDD due to the loading of the recent models: use thumbnails inside the lxf file instead than load the whole model, and load the model only when the user try to rotate it in its preview box.

Miscellaneous

• (Graphics/Screenshot) A key to enhance graphics "on the fly". Very useful for screenshots or to inspect a scene without change graphic settings and restart the software, specially in computer too slow to use a good level of graphic while you work on the model. It should work until the key is pressed or if you move the scene.
  
• (Search) Find couple element, useful for those composed bricks listed as separate parts (for example 3937 and 3938).
  
• (Search) Find all connectable elements: filter the bricks palette hiding every brick that is not connectable with the selected brick, and excluding standard stud/technic pin/clip connections (too common to be useful in the filter).
  
• (Search) Add search options, to improve different levels of tollerance. That options have to be selectable on the fly.
  
• (Search) [New] If you search more than one word, the search function requires that the words are in the same order than in the description of the part. Allow to search more words in any order.
  
• (Placement) When you drag a brick, you can rotate it "on the fly". I'd like: 1) more intuitive rotation, sometimes I need much time to find the right direction! 2) more angles, for example 45° rotation clicking two arrows together, or a free rotation working as in the brick palette.
  
• (Placement) A "drop brick" and "shift brick" functions, to easily place a brick in difficult positions.
  
• (Placement) Auto adjust connected gears to fit one other easily. Often technic builder pass the great time of build time to adjust gears and connected elements with little rotations and small adjustment along axles, that's a waste of time that need to be cancelled.
  
• (Built Method) Unlock the "Filter Bricks by Boxes" to custom lists. Very very useful to built something when you have the part list.
  This feature need another simple feature: Easily Import part lists (csv file?)
  A chance to add "on the fly" parts from standard palette would be necessary too.
  
• (Software) Drag'n Drop to open files from file manager!
  
• (Mode) Add a "Real Mode" where you can use all bricks, but only in the colours in which that bricks has been produced.
  A very interesting feature for this mode would be to choose bricks produced in a specific period of time (for example bricks produced from 1998 to 2004).
  NOTE: the Custom Palette Feature allow to obtain this feature, but manually.
  
• (Mode) Add a "PaB Mode" where you can use only bricks available for Pick a Brick.

[Cy-Gor]

Fully multi-core/threading and 64 bit to take advantage of extra ram.

Custom parts palettes would be a nice addition.

Lastly, Tank treads with snapping, or a tread building applet to make placing tracks easier.


and of course, more parts. never enough parts lol

[BasOne]

I just thought of something..

This would prolly require a major rebuild of the software.

Fully functional technic models....

If you turn one cog, have every cog, wormwheel and beam connected to it work...

Also, an animation function, save as avi like option...

Edited by BasOne, 03 August 2011 - 01:12 AM.

[prateek]

Calabar, on 03 August 2011 - 12:26 AM, said:

- Allow to "sum"/"subtract" selections made with the rectangle

Isn't that what Control + Left click does?

[Brickdoctor]

A lot of these features are already in SR 3D, so I won't mention anything like that. (not that I wouldn't like it)

So...

• The much-requested 'Gravity Feature', allowing you to cause a brick or bricks to drop down as far as possible. (or to the 'floor')
  
• Ability to 'save' a camera position and be able to return to the exact same angle later. (something I've requested before) So you can take screenshots of multiple steps of an RCB and have them all be from the same perspective, and so you can confidently shoot stop motion animation in LDD.

[roamingstudio]

Actually the one which (for me) would be the biggest boon is improved Instruction facility, allowing subgroups to be built first (user specified order perhaps?). Even if the subgroups use the existing automated design (which makes some strange decisions), it would greatly improve the way LDD can be used, especially for MOC's.

A related feature to this would then be to have Instructions exported to PDF. Whilst callouts (and everything else) would be fantastic, they would not be necessary in a first version.

After that; some of the selection tool ability would be nice; and perhaps a feature which allows you to look up whether bricks exist in that colour (as per Superkalle LDD Manager).

[Brickdoctor]

On the subject of selection tools, I was playing around with a photo editor, and I thought it would be useful if LDD had some sort of free select, similar to the Lasso Tool, for when you don't want to select with a rectangle and clicking multiple bricks would be too hard. Not sure how easy that is to implement in a 3D environment, though.

And I think I'd like it if rotation tools returned to the way they were in older versions, where the way a key rotated a brick didn't depend so much on the exact view of the brick. It was one of the reasons I found LDD much easier to work with than Bricksmith.

Edited by Brickdoctor, 03 August 2011 - 07:14 AM.

[Calabar]

My wishlist updated.

prateek, on 03 August 2011 - 04:36 AM, said:

Isn't that what Control + Left click does?

No! Left Click add a single brick only, I want to add/subtract whole sections selected with the rectangle tool again (or in any other way!).

[Superkalle]

Calabar, on 03 August 2011 - 09:06 AM, said:

No! Left Click add a single brick only, I want to add/subtract whole sections selected with the rectangle tool again.

Yes, excellent idea.
And while we are at it. When you do add or subtract bricks (either indivudually or with rectangle tool), it would be great if while holding the CTRL key you cannot nullify the entire selection if you slightly move the mouse. It has happened to me thousands of times that you CTRL click to add bricks, and then at the last brick you accidently move the mouse slightly while clicking, and the entire selection is nullified.

[pbk420]

An animation feature would be nice. More minifig head and torso decorations,or custom decoration feature. More minifig headgear. Yes i love minifigs.

[prateek]

Calabar, on 03 August 2011 - 09:06 AM, said:

No! Left Click add a single brick only, I want to add/subtract whole sections selected with the rectangle tool again (or in any other way!).

Oh, in that case, that is a great idea. I also like Superkalle's idea. It's so annoying when you've selected a lot of bricks, and then you accidentally click on empty space and it deselects

[Brickdoctor]

prateek, on 04 August 2011 - 05:48 PM, said:

Oh, in that case, that is a great idea. I also like Superkalle's idea. It's so annoying when you've selected a lot of bricks, and then you accidentally click on empty space and it deselects

On that note, change Undo to include every action, not just brick placement. So if you select a brick you don't want to select or deselect some bricks you didn't want to deselect, you can use Undo to remedy that. And if you accidentally hide the wrong brick, you can undo it without having to reveal all the hidden bricks and starting over.

[Calabar]

Little update to my list (under selection category).

[SpiderSpaceman]

I'm just gonna repeat myself:

set specific trans bricks in a model to emit light

include lighting (time of day; climates) presets in view mode

replace the godawful raster panorama backdrops with some that are more sophisticated or at least not so jarringly attention stealing and fuzzy

vectorized screenshots

animation/programmable hinge timeline - mappable to key commands?

1st person view mini figure navigation (or a more general 'put me in a brick' for cameras and setting multiple fast access views) - great for interior exploration, only possible digitally, adding new dimensions of appreciation and a helpful flaw hunting tool. (and bonus, lego creator's vehicle piloting)





well, back to my rcb duties

Edited by SpiderSpaceman, 05 August 2011 - 07:44 AM.

[Nitroxylin]

My wishlist:
More BIONICLE parts.
More torso & face prints for minifigures.
Choice of print as a window (with scrolling).

[Brickdoctor]

SpiderSpaceman, on 05 August 2011 - 07:42 AM, said:

include lighting (time of day; climates) presets in view mode
1st person view mini figure navigation (or a more general 'put me in a brick' for cameras and setting multiple fast access views) - great for interior exploration, only possible digitally, adding new dimensions of appreciation and a helpful flaw hunting tool. (and bonus, lego creator's vehicle piloting)\

Ah, yes, I'd love those as well. Forgot to mention the first-person camera. And while we're wishing for animation, it'd be great to be able to have said first person camera be virtually embedded in a piece - say a specially marked minifig head, so we could put the camera onto something animated and define a path for the camera to follow. But that's probably way too much to ask for.

SpiderSpaceman, on 05 August 2011 - 07:42 AM, said:

replace the godawful raster panorama backdrops with some that are more sophisticated or at least not so jarringly attention stealing and fuzzy

Well that's what transparent backgrounds and photo editors are for.

[SpiderSpaceman]

Brickdoctor, on 05 August 2011 - 07:57 AM, said:

Ah, yes, I'd love those as well. Forgot to mention the first-person camera. And while we're wishing for animation, it'd be great to be able to have said first person camera be virtually embedded in a piece - say a specially marked minifig head, so we could put the camera onto something animated and define a path for the camera to follow. But that's probably way too much to ask for.

Well that's what transparent backgrounds and photo editors are for.

Haha, I know. I was just being a grump about the uglying up of the program.



and don't forget we got all the flex parts last time. keep throwing them big bones and just be pleasantly surprised when they catch 'em  

[SpiderSpaceman]

Calabar, on 03 August 2011 - 12:26 AM, said:

- Fix the issue with rotation tool when you have more than one pivot.
- [New] Fix the issue due to irregular object bounding boxes: sometimes these boxes interact with the scene, but they shouldn't because are not real (for example the windscreen of the set 6932 lift the spaceship from the ground when I rotate it to close the cabin).

jeez, yeah.

the bounding boxes do that crazy floor lowering thing even when you put axes in minifig hands, turn wheels, etc.


and that first one reminded me of another thing I want:

A tool that guides a ball to a socket/ improvements to hinge align




EDIT: Oh man!  I forgot the thing I want more than anything:

Online cooperative building!  please?

Edited by SpiderSpaceman, 06 August 2011 - 01:46 AM.

[Brickdoctor]

SpiderSpaceman, on 05 August 2011 - 04:22 PM, said:

Online cooperative building!  please?

Seeing as that would take RCBs to new heights, and I love RCBs, I could go for that.

This probably wouldn't affect me personally, but I think there are some fans out there who'd love for LDD to run on Linux platforms. (without having to use Wine)

[prateek]

Brickdoctor, on 04 August 2011 - 05:50 PM, said:

On that note, change Undo to include every action, not just brick placement. So if you select a brick you don't want to select or deselect some bricks you didn't want to deselect, you can use Undo to remedy that. And if you accidentally hide the wrong brick, you can undo it without having to reveal all the hidden bricks and starting over.

They have that function in AutoCAD. It would be awesome, but beware, it can get a bit annoying.

[Brickdoctor]

prateek, on 06 August 2011 - 02:45 AM, said:

They have that function in AutoCAD. It would be awesome, but beware, it can get a bit annoying.

Okay, then introduce a separate button. Ctrl+Z/Cmd+Z undoes brick placement, Ctrl+Alt+Z/Ctrl+Option+Z undoes last action (edit: not including either Undo function). Or similar keyboard shortcut.

Edited by Brickdoctor, 06 August 2011 - 03:17 AM.

[Superkalle]

Please TLG, add right mouse click to pan (as complement to shift + left click), of that doesn't work, left+right mouse button together.

[Calabar]

Superkalle, on 07 August 2011 - 04:53 PM, said:

Please TLG, add right mouse click to pan (as complement to shift + left click), of that doesn't work, left+right mouse button together.

"Right Click" is used to rotate the scene, so it cannot be used.
I think SHIFT + "Right Click", the LDD default, is a good compromise for this.
Another key for the same use will be a bit redundant.

Both right and left click is unused, and it would be a good thing exploit it, maybe with a custom function.

[hrontos]

Calabar, on 08 August 2011 - 01:04 PM, said:

"Right Click" is used to rotate the scene, so it cannot be used.
I think SHIFT + "Right Click", the LDD default, is a good compromise for this.
Another key for the same use will be a bit redundant.

Both right and left click is unused, and it would be a good thing exploit it, maybe with a custom function.

Yes, it would be a bit redundant, on the other hand, almost every function you can control only by mouse (without keyboard), only for panning the Shift is needed.

But since the scroll wheel can be used for zooming, when rotated, may be panning could assigned to clicking the scroll wheel, since it can be clicked.

May be this will be considered more as a bug report and not as a feature request.  

LDD support different views of model in building instruction. This means, that for every BI step, LDD generates also camera position and stores this info in the LXF file. So every step can use different view of the model.

Problem is, that the change of camera view (in design and also in BI view mode) is not treated as model change, and Save function is not accessible.

What I would like to have in next LDD patch is that change of view (at least in the BI view mode) would be treated as change and LDD will modify the original camera view asociated with the BI step.

The key point is to be able to review the BIs and improve the bad camera views before generating the BIs for the model.

I think this feature is not so dificult to implement, because the file format already supports it and it could help also the original targer audience of LDD - kids using it in DesignByMe mode.

Edited by hrontos, 08 August 2011 - 01:35 PM.